According to the prior art, the most common structures to achieve an enhancement-mode AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistor (E-mode AlGaN/GaN HEMT) include: 1. Ga-face p-GaN gate E-mode HEMT structure, and 2. N-face AlxGaN gate E-mode HEMT structure. Nonetheless, as implied by their names, only the gate region will be p-GaN or AlxGaN.
The most common fabrication method is to adopt and epitaxial structure. Etch the p-GaN outside the gate region using dry etching while maintaining the completeness of the thickness of the underlying epitaxial layer. Because if the underlying epitaxial layer is etched too much, the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) will not be formed at the interface of AlGaN/GaN of an N-face p-GaN gate E-mode HEMT structure. Thereby, using dry etching is challenging because the etching depth is hard to control and nonuniformity in thickness still occurs in every epitaxial layer of an epitaxial wafer. Besides, both this epitaxial structure and the normal D-Mode AlGaN/GaN HEMT epitaxial structure face the problems related to current collapse, such as buffer traps and surface traps, requiring further resolution.
Accordingly, to improve the above drawbacks, the present invention provides a novel epitaxial structure of AlGaN/GaN, an active device formed by using the epitaxial structure, and the fabrication method for integration.